127 Hours (old)

Rated R2010

An experienced outdoorsman (James Franco) on a solo hike gets trapped in a deep crevice in the desert and has to cut off his arm to survive. Director Danny Boyle and actor Franco, with the help of A.R. Rahman’s music and cinematography by Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle, take that slender but sensational news story – based on the true ordeal of Aron Ralston -- and spin it into something like cinematic gold, using Ralston’s flashbacks and hallucinations to etch the personal side of a magnificently stressful situation. It’s Franco in excelsis. But it’s also probably the longest 94 minutes you’ll spend in a good movie – that’s meant as a compliment. The adapted screenplay is by Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, who also did Slumdog Millionaire together.
ByKelly Vance